REAL REMNANT: A History of Early Andy Paley

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Andy Paley grew up in Boston and formed a band called Catfish Black with future Modern Lovers members Jerry Harrison (keyboards) and Ernie Brooks (drums). They renamed themselves the Sidewinders, added Billy Squier, and recorded an album produced by Lenny Kaye in the mid-70s. Cuts from the album, which is well worth hearing, are on YouTube, but you have to dig.

The highlight here is at the two-minute mark, when we see a closeup of the band on the back of the jacket and Andy plays an extended solo. They were regulars at Max’s Kansas City, Andy played guitar on Elliott Murphy’s Night Lights, and disappeared leaving little more than a trace.

After the Sidewinders, Andy and his brother Jonathan formed the Paley Brothers, signed with Sire and released an album produced by Springsteen’s engineer at the time, Jimmy Iovine. It’s a fantastic elpee, a staple on the Kreutzer turntable back in those days of collegiate love and squalor.

The brothers also recorded a cover of Richie Valens’ Come On Let’s Go, with the Ramones for the Rock and Roll High School soundtrack.

The Paley’s went on tour, opening in arenas for the similarly hair-styled Shaun Cassidy, but did not break out with the teenyboppers and did break up.

Andy played guitar on the Modern Lovers’ Back In Your Life album, which features Abdul and Cleopatra, and that live show at the Peppermint Lounge I posted last night (which reminded me of Andy and his career–which I’ve augmented by looking things up).

In the early 80s I was visiting a friend’s family’s big country house a little bit upstate in New York. A few of us went out to play croquet and ran into a long-haired guy knocking a ball around. I recognized Andy from his album cover, and we played. He was a friend of one of the cousins, I think. He was writing songs and producing Jonathan Richman records. Nice guy, though he loved to send people. But don’t we all?

I think he appreciated meeting some fans.

Night Music: Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, “Anthony and Cleopatra”

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Live, at the Peppermint Lounge, in Manhattan, which was kind of next door to the original and awesome Barnes and Noble Store.

Not that Barnes and Noble had anything to do with it, except that rents were cheap in that belly of Manhattan, for reasons that are hard to imagine now, at that time.

As far as Jonathan Richman and his white reggae goes, this live cut explains a lot about what he’s thinking. And the band executes. Richman was a legendary originator of the punk sound, and later a performer who repudiated much of what came before, and still made a bunch of music that was passionate and individualist and passionate.

Lunch Break: More White Reggae

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Thinking about weird but wonderful white reggae, here is this one from Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Abdul and Cleopatra, that I really love (with a suitably odd homemade video–for instance, why use a map of the Tidewater rather than, say, Egypt?):

And this other one, the instrumental Egyptian Reggae, which has more than 2 million views, perhaps more for the video than the tune (which is catchy nonetheless).

Breakfast Blend: White Reggae (and Wingless Angels)

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Just an excuse to listen to Dreadlock Holiday.


10cc – dreadlock holiday by gazaw

Which is pretty amazing. The most literal video is also the most ironic. I’m not sure Wolfman Jack would approve.

Keith, on the other hand. moved to Jamaica at some point, and ended up having a band of local musicians record as Wingless Angels.

The beauty of Keef’s album with Wingless Angels is it really is the music his Jamaican neighbors/friends/accomplices played. As he says in his book, you can hear the crickets. This is way closer to the gospel of Rastafari than that of Island Records and the international hit machine’s embrace of the Island.

There are virtues and tradeoffs either way, compromises explicit and implicit.

In the end, it comes down the music.

Night Music: Spoon, “Eddie’s Ragga”

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Spoon has a new record coming out in August, and today a song escaped or was pushed, called The Rent I Pay. It’s okay, a thumping beat and some layers of guitars and distortion, with lyrics I’m not obsessive enough to understand just yet.

Back in 2007 I bought Spoon’s rapturously reviewed album Ga Ga Ga Ga. Actually I downloaded the tracks from my music vendor of choice then, eMusic. So while I have the files, I don’t know the package, which I’m sure had a torturously tiny lyrics sheet. Which may be why I played the stuff a bunch of times and then it oozed back into the deep well that is my music library. I remember liking it well enough, but obviously not indelibly.

And from a couple of listens today to the Rent I Pay and a revisit to Ga Ga Ga Ga, I think the problem is obvious. These guys are, as everyone says, one of the best rock n roll bands of our times, but they’re not quite right. The tempo isn’t pushed forward enough, the songs don’t swing. The crunch is big, but echoes over a static landscape into which it curls up and dies. The problem of comparisons is that there aren’t that many rock bands these days, apart from the ones playing the oldies. Call that small pond syndrome.

And these guys aren’t young, like Fidlar. Spoon formed in 1993, in the heights of rock’s last gasp, Grunge.

Sorry to make this sound like such a drag, Spoon isn’t really that. But it doesn’t burst with excitement, the way the Black Keys sometimes do (or did, in their early days). This bit of white reggae is just fine, but it really makes me want to hear Dreadlock Holiday.

NIGHT MUSIC: 2Cellos, “Highway to Hell”

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I closed the Fantasy Football Guide tonight.

I bet the 2cellos are fun to see live, but bowed instruments are so 1980s.

But, it’s all I have:

#exhaustion

Night Music: The Vapors, “Letter From Hiro”

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All that stuff about the Records last week just reminded me how much I loved the flood of British Power Pop bands that poured in tagging along with the punks in the late 70’s.

Nick Lowe might have led the charge with Paul Weller (The Jam) and Bram Tchaikovsky (The Motors)  along with Eddie and the Hot Rods and the Tom Robinson band. It was great here in the Bay Area, as one of those bands tickled in each week.

Such were the Vapors, who became legitimate one-hit wonders with their incredibly clever and tuneful–and I guess by now overplayed–Turning Japanese. And, the album the gave us that song, New Clear Days, was just as solid to me as was the Records vinyl.

In saying that get that I really dug them both, and still do.

So, I went to the tune I remember best from their big album, A Letter From Hiro.

Which oddly seems to also tie back into all the Japanese power pop of a few years back.

Strange.

 

The Hellacopters Do The Raspberries Doing The Who

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But it’s Imperial State Electric.

Note how the drummer borrows what’s good about Keith Moon while leaving behind the annoying excess nonsense.

Song of the Week – Tell Me Your Plans and Empty Ever After, The Shirts

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

I believe in trusting my instincts and following the subtle signals we receive from the cosmos. I know, it sounds hokey but when unrelated events line up you have to wonder why and trust there is a reason.

Let me explain how I came to choose today’s SotW.

Blondie has been all over the media lately. They got a recent cover story in MOJO (May 2014) and took a rare musical spot on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (May 14th). This got me thinking about Blondie’s roots as an act at CBGB’s along with the other bands commonly associated with the club. Some had very successful careers (The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith) others a little less so (Television and Mink Deville) and yet others were merely a footnote – like The Shirts.

So I began to think that maybe a song by The Shirts would be a good SotW candidate, especially since their brand of power pop was closer to Blondie than the edgier rock of most of those other bands.

But here’s the kicker that caused me to pull the trigger. I just received an email from Netflix announcing that the 13 episode season two of Orange is the new Black is now available for viewing. Bingo, the light went on! Annie Golden, the lead singer for The Shirts, played the character of the “mute” Norma in season one. That locked it.

Today’s SotW is “Tell Me Your Plans” from their 1978 debut album.

“Tell Me Your Plans” was a surprise hit in Europe but received little notice here in the States.

For an example of the band’s harder rock sound, check out “Empty Ever After.”

The Shirts were based out of Brooklyn. Several of the Italian American bandmates were cousins – kind of a neighborhood band – and preferred that the band’s name be pronounced with a heavy Brooklyn accent — The “Shoits” (think John Travolta’s Tony Manero character in Saturday Night Fever).

The Shirts was produced by Mike Thorne who may have formed relationships with the CBGB acts when he was hired to work on Wire’s Live at CBGB Theatre, New York – July 18th 1978. It has his trademark sound that graces quite a few other great albums including Wire’s Pink Flag, ‘Til Tuesday’s Voices Carry, and Human Sexual Response’s In A Roman Mood.

After releasing a couple more albums The Shirts dissolved in 1981.

Enjoy… until next week.

Night Music: Chic, “Good Times”

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I don’t like prejudice, and so I don’t like knee-jerk evaluations of stuff. Oh, it isn’t your style? I would hope you listen instead and think instead of jerk your knees. Or shoot your mouth. Criticize, don’t bleat like some pop/punk princess.

I was working at the Food Coop today, enter Portlandia sound effect, and the squad leader put on a Pandora stream of early 80s pop disco. Reminders of lots of cheesy tunes, lots of dark nights, and also a reminder that at a time when Punk was ascendent, the Disco vision was also ascendant. The outcomes were totally different, but the motivations of the two were locked together, at least until AIDS erupted.

I and almost every other rocker I knew loved Good Times. It’s a great groove.